Author Archive | Jared Newman

Got Bandwidth Caps? Netflix Has You Covered

Posted by Jared Newman on June 23, 2011 at 7:15 am

Netflix is now letting U.S. users dial down the quality of streaming videos to avoid hitting bandwidth caps.

Users can choose from three quality settings by visiting the “Your Account” page on Netflix’s website and looking for the “Manage Video Quality” link. “Good quality” consumes up to 0.3 GB per hour, “Better quality” burns up to 0.7 GB per hour, and “Best quality” consumes up to 1 GB per hour for standard definition or 2.3 GB per hour for HD. The settings apparently apply to computers and televisions.

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Microsoft’s “NuAds” for Kinect: Hey, Whatever Brings the Content

Posted by Jared Newman on June 22, 2011 at 4:15 pm

Microsoft’s got more ideas in store for Kinect, the motion-sensing Xbox 360 camera that launched last fall. This week, the company announced a lofty goal to create interactive advertising powered by voice and gestures.

Microsoft is calling them “NuAds,” and has walked through a few examples on the Microsoft Advertising blog. During an ad for Coke, for example, the user can say “Xbox Tweet” to share the ad on Twitter. An ad for Toyota might allow the user to say “Xbox Near Me” and find nearby dealerships, and an ad for another TV broadcast might let the user schedule a calendar reminder by saying “Xbox Schedule.”

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who feels queasy at the sight of more intrusive ads in the name of “audience engagement” and “social advocacy,” but there is a silver lining here: If this is what helps Microsoft lure advertisers — and by extension content providers — to Internet television, then it’s all good.

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Firefox Releases Are Now Less of a Big Deal

Posted by Jared Newman on June 21, 2011 at 1:30 pm

As planned, Mozilla has launched Firefox 5, which considering the browser’s six-year history would seem to be big news.

Except, it’s not. Firefox 5 is actually the first update in a new, faster development cycle for Mozilla. From now on, new versions of Firefox will arrive every six weeks, meaning that 2011 will bring more Firefox updates than the entire six years prior.

In some ways, I like this approach, which is roughly the same way Google handles updates to Chrome. If a feature isn’t ready, Mozilla can simply hold it until the next version, which means less waiting for the features that are ready.

But the rapid release cycle introduces its own issues. It can result in some pretty dull updates, as evidenced by Firefox 5, in which CSS animation support and performance enhancements are among the biggest new features.

More importantly, I’m worried that these rapid updates will discourage dramatic user interface changes, like the difference between Firefox 3 and 4, or Internet Explorer 8 and 9. I don’t know for sure that this will happen, but I do know that after more than two years of rapid releases, Google Chrome pretty much looks the same as it always has.

So while rapid releases may allow Firefox to get better at a faster clip, it could make bold new changes harder to implement. Let’s hope the new development cycle doesn’t confine Mozilla to mere incremental improvements.

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Sega Gets Hacked; Game Companies Aren’t Getting the Hint

Posted by Jared Newman on June 20, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Sega’s best customers — the ones who’ve signed up to receive information about the company’s products  — are now the victims of yet another attack on a game publisher.

The hack affects nearly 1.3 million people, whose names, e-mails, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were stolen, Sega says, but no payment information was compromised. Sega has taken its Sega Pass system offline for now, has reset all passwords and is warning users to change their login information at any site where they use the same username and password — in other words, the usual precautions.

Unfortunately, Sega is not the first company to succumb to hackers, and I’m not just referring to the attacks on Sony that collapsed the Playstation Network and Sony Online Entertainment in April. So far this month, at least a half dozen game publishers have been attacked, and five of those incidents resulted in stolen user information.

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Maybe We Need New Game Consoles After All

Posted by Jared Newman on June 20, 2011 at 5:55 am

Microsoft and Sony — but not Nintendo — would have you believe that we’re in for a long game console cycle, with no rush to replace current-generation hardware.

But after seeing the PC version of Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3 at E3, and hearing how the console version will compare, I beg to differ.

Johan Andersson, a rendering architect for EA developer DICE, confirmed over Twitter that the console version of Battlefield 3 will be choked back to 30 frames per second and 720p resolution. On PC, Battlefield 3 runs at a silky smooth 60 frames per second, and it looked wonderful during a brief hands-on demo at E3 earlier this month. DICE is making compromises to the console version to allow for bigger levels, lots of vehicles and certain visual effects.

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Redbox Game Rentals Go Nationwide, Filling a Void Left by Blockbuster

Posted by Jared Newman on June 17, 2011 at 8:51 am

Redbox is coming to the rescue of video game rentals, adding games to every one of its ubiquitous DVD kiosks.

Starting today, all 21,000 Redbox kiosks in the United States will rent video games for $2 per night. That’s more expensive than Redbox’s $1 per night movie rentals, but it’s on par with Blockbuster’s game rental rate of $9 per five nights, and is more flexible.

And besides, Redbox kiosks are easier to find nowadays. After Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in September, the number of U.S. stores in operation dropped from 3,300 to 1,700. Redbox is hoping its grocery and convenience store presence will lead to more game rentals. “We make it very convenient by having our kiosks in front of the places people are at every day,” Joel Resnik, Redbox’s vice president of games, said in April when the company announced its game rental plans.

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Still Missing: A Place to Get Those Crazy Kinect PC Apps

Posted by Jared Newman on June 17, 2011 at 8:10 am

As promised, Microsoft’s making it easy for developers to create Kinect PC apps with a non-commercial Kinect for Windows software development kit.

The SDK provides access to raw data from Kinect’s motion sensors, skeletal tracking of one or two people, advanced audio processing (such as identifying a sound source) and plenty of sample code. To show how developers can make their own Kinect apps, Microsoft hosted a 24-hour coding session that resulted in a motion-controlled quadricopter, a virtual orchestra conducted by hand gestures and a video conferencing tool that can identify and zoom in on the speaker.

Just one problem: If you’re a Kinect owner who wants to see what the motion-sensing camera can do — beyond dancing video games on the Xbox 360, that is — Microsoft still doesn’t make it easy to find and download these creative Kinect PC apps.

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Am I the Only One Who Likes Physical Android Buttons?

Posted by Jared Newman on June 15, 2011 at 4:04 pm

Boy Genius Report has posted some thorough alleged specs for Google’s next unannounced Nexus phone, possibly dubbed the Nexus 4G. Many of the specs are what you’d expect from a flagship Google phone, such as a dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 1080p video capture and LTE connectivity.

But what’s most intriguing about this rumor is the possibility that Google will completely do away with hardware buttons on the next version of Android, called “Ice Cream Sandwich” or Android 4.0. The home, menu, back and search buttons will presumably become part of the software.

It wouldn’t be an unexpected change. Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the software version optimized for tablets, already lacks physical buttons, and Google has made clear its intentions to merge smartphones and tablets onto a single software version with Ice Cream Sandwich. But it’s harder to picture how Android tablets’ button-free concept would work on Android phones.

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No Blu-ray or DVD Playback for Wii U

Posted by Jared Newman on June 15, 2011 at 9:12 am

Last week, I wrote a list of unanswered questions about Nintendo’s Wii U, the upcoming home game console revealed at E3. But I neglected to ask one biggie: Will the Wii U be a game console or a multimedia device?

The answer is still unknown, but if you’ve got a big collection of DVDs or Blu-ray discs, you won’t be enjoying them on the Wii U. Speaking to investors, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata confirmed that the new console won’t support movie playback in either format, Kotaku reports. The Wii U will only accept discs in a 25 GB proprietary format.

Nintendo figures that enough people already have DVD or Blu-ray players, so including the capability — and licensing the associated patents — wasn’t worth the extra cost.

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Duke Nukem Forever Arrives, and Apparently It’s Awful

Posted by Jared Newman on June 14, 2011 at 1:07 pm

I haven’t played Duke Nukem Forever, which hits stores today, but after reading a bunch of reviews from other game critics, I’m not sure it’s even worth the effort to put it in my GameFly queue or find a Redbox game rental kiosk. The opinions — at least from writers whose work I admire — are unanimous: this game is not just poorly designed, it’s offensive and unfunny.

I’ll paste some highlights from my favorite reviews below, but first, a little background: Duke Nukem Forever was in development for 12 years by 3D Realms, becoming a legendary tale of video game vaporware. In 2009, publisher Take-Two finally pulled the plug on funding, and 3D Realms disbanded. You can read that whole story at Wired.

Last September, Take-Two subsidiary 2K Games announced that developer Gearbox Software would pick up where 3D Realms left off, developing a first-person shooter that preserves the series’ tradition of foul-mouthed humor.

Gearbox has a good track record, having previously developed the hit shooter Borderlands. What could go wrong? Apparently, everything.

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